In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Via Fox News , Los Angeles is temporarily shutting down several city vaccination sites in the coming days after it burned through its limited allocation of first doses for Moderna’s vaccine. LA Mayor Eric Garcetti made the announcement during a briefing Wednesday, noting that the city distributed 98% of all doses received. The closure will affect sites at Dodgers Stadium and the other four non-mobile vaccination sites on Friday and Saturday, with reopenings eyed for Tuesday or Wednesday. "This week we only received 16,000 new doses. 16,000," Garcetti said during the briefing. "That’s about the number of doses we give out every single day. That is unacceptable." The week’s allocation is a reduction of 90,000 doses from the week prior, the mayor said. However federal officials involved with the COVID-19 response struck an optimistic tone this week, with the Biden administration claiming vaccine supply has increased from 8.6 million doses delivered to...

Yesterday, the CDC updated its masking guidelines . We've been in this pretty much a full year, the pandemic surges and wanes, and the CDC's answer is we need to wear two masks now instead of one, since nothing else has worked. After months of demands for federal health officials to update mask recommendations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced new guidelines Wednesday that include wearing well-fitting face masks or two masks at a time to help curb the COVID-19 pandemic. The updated guidance follows the release of new research from the CDC which tested various masks in a lab setting and found evidence that combining a cloth mask over a surgical mask could dramatically reduce both the spread of the virus to others and exposure to the virus oneself. So over the course of a week, he CDC has done "new research" into whether two masks are better than one? Exactly a week ago, Dr Fauci was saying there was no scientific evidence, just do it...

So I'm seeing headlines about Statement on crossing state lines for vaccine , COVID-19 vaccine lines growing across states , HOLLYWOOD ELITE CUTTING LINES , and so forth. My wife stopped by a local Subway, and the lady behind the counter, seeing my wife was a member of the eligible over-65 cohort, asked if she'd gotten her shot yet. My wife replied that we've checked, and there's so far no realistic way we can get one, even though we're eligible. The lady behnid the counter said she had a friend who paid to get it, but then he bragged about it, and now he's under investigation. I've done web searches on whether there's a black market in the vaccine. A few articles say there "could" be one, but it's only for the wealthy, and anyhow, it's Trump's fault. But the Subway lady's friend doesn't sound like he's rich and powerful -- at minimum, he wouldn't be investigated if he were. So it seems like stuff is happening, b...

The 2021 Super Bowl ratings, like the 2020 election results, were delayed. When they finally came out, they reflected the continuing decline of the Super Bowl as a media event. According to the New York Post, CBS announced on Tuesday morning that 96.4 million viewers watched the game across all their platforms, “including the CBS Television Network, CBS Sports and NFL digital properties, Buccaneers and Chiefs mobile properties, Verizon Media mobile properties and ESPN Deportes television and digital properties.” . . . Last season’s Super Bowl, a Chiefs victory over the 49ers on Fox, averaged 102.1 million viewers across all platforms. Some in the elite, who apparently weren't paying close attention, complained that the fans in the stadium were clearly not social distancing. Even though the ones in the stadium could be excused, since they were cardboard cutouts, it does strike me as a valid point -- if corporate policies require employees attending Zoom meetings from home to ...

I'm a convert to Roman Catholicism in late adulthood. This means I have no practical memory of the pre-Conciliar Church. I came in after 20 years or so in various Anglo-Catholic environments, and I was led to believe, especially under the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus , that the transition would be minimal -- at worst, a few months of catechetical touchup on Sunday afternoons before we'd be received justlikethat. The people who proposed this, including Jeffrey Steenson, were unfortunately deluded, and the sad disappointment of the North American ordinariate reflects this. I had no choice but to become a convert to the post-Conciliar, diocesan Roman Catholic Church once the process envisioned by Steenson and others failed in the case of our Anglcan parish. On that basis, one must assume I saw merit in becoming Catholic outside any special provision for Anglicans. And if I saw enough merit in post-Conciliar Roman Catholiicism, and had no practical memory of any so...

In 1984, Apple was Apple, and the Super Bowl was the Super Bowl. Steve Jobs ran the commercial to introduce the Mac, and the Super Bowl was the place to introduce it. The theme of the ad was that the Mac would show how 1984 wouldn't be like 1984. How things have changed. Just for starters, the female hammer thrower in the ad would mow have to be a transsexual guy, just to show how woke Apple is. But I have no reason to think ratings for this year's Super Bowl won't continue to reflect declining interest in the game, what with narcissistic, ultra-privileged, multimillionaire players taking a knee during the anthem mostly just to insult the fans for being racists. Beyond that, Apple's changed. Jobs launched the Think Different campaign in 1997, a generation ago. "[H]e claimed specifically that 'you always had to be a little different to buy an Apple computer.'" Off the top of my head, I'm not sure if Apple still even sells computers. It...

In a ruling that split the baby, the US Supreme Court yesterday issued an injunction pending appeal against California's ban on indoor worship over most of the state, but it left in place the ban on singing and chanting. According to The Hill: In a 6-3 ruling, the judges held that the state can’t ban indoor worship, but it can cap indoor services at 25 percent capacity. The court also didn’t stop the state from enforcing a ban on indoor singing and chanting. The court ruled in two cases brought against the state by churches — one by South Bay United Pentecostal Church and another by Harvest Rock Church — over restrictions in the state. California had moved to bar indoor worship services and other indoor activities such as dining and movie screenings in areas designated as "Tier 1" — which covers most of the state — due to high coronavirus numbers. Liberty Counsel, which represents one group of plaintiffs, explained on its site: The injunction remains in pla...